The First Attempt

Okay, looking back on my first kolache attempt, I was a little cocky. The main problem I had was actually locating a recipe. I searched the Internet quite a bit until I ran down a recipe posted from an old "Texas Monthly" article. So I gave it a whirl. I mean, how many recipes could there be for bread with fruit in it?

For those of you who are confused: a kolache is a fluffy, pastry kind of like a danish. The difference is that the texture is much fluffier and buttery. Not heavy and sugary.  Many people think of a meat and bread combo as a kolache. In Czech, a meat/bread combo is a "kloboshniki" which is probably as butchered a spelling as you can get. I just called those "pigs-in-a-blanket", but I am a little redneck I guess.

So...I digress.

I gathered up all the ingredients and went to work. Little did I realize that the recipe made 6 dozen kolaches!!! It took every bowl, pan, and surface in my 600 sq ft apartment to produce the dough. Six and a 1/2 cups of flour! Crap! FOUR sticks of butter! GEEZ!

Well, needless to say, I was skimpy on some of the ingredients and a little too generous with others.

Results: This batch has been dubbed, and will forever be referred to as, "apple biscuits". The breading came out white like a Bisquick biscuit. They were not what I would call soft, but they also weren't so hard that it would roll off the table and kill the cat. Very frustrated, I resolved to make a new batch...the next time I found 8 hours of free time during graduate school.